Seems a lot of this is about cost. Schools are hot when they cost less.
I think our school has different hot colleges because many families can afford full price. Not happy about it but many decide to not limit their kids’ budgets…at least not the kids in the top decile. Like I said, for kids closer to the middle of the class, parents don’t want to be full pay private college and more of those kids are choosing a big southern school or super fun Boulder over going to UIUC, Iowa, Indiana, UMN, etc.
No one here goes to public schools out east and UC schools are just as expensive OOS as a midsized elite university so kids take a pass on those too.
Bates has become more popular in our area, for sure. They’ve started recruiting more at high schools in our area, and it seems D doesn’t have to say “it’s in Maine” quite as often.
Their acceptance rate has gone down dramatically. For the Class of 2020, it was a 22% acceptance rate. Last year, for the Class of 2023, it was 12%. That’s due in part to Bates getting rid of the supplemental essay, but there has been a big push in recruitment. Bates is steadily increasing numbers of first gen to college students, URM students, and international students. Bates has also gone up in various rankings over the last three years or so.
When my oldest graduated in 2013, SMU was hot, probably because they intentionally targeted accepting those northeast all around good but not great kids (B+ average, JV etc). Before my S13’s time his boarding school would send one kid every few years. His year 5 kids from his school attended. And the next year SMU started rejecting kids from his boarding school. Not sure if this situation is still the case.
It was always considered after Trinity and Conn Coll. Never mind MBCWA.
Please note CC posters lol. Im not speaking the relative excellence or selectivity of any of these schools.
I’m talking about interest and excitement levels in the terms of being a “hot school” on CC and in your communities.
Bates has now made it the opposite imho. Trinity conn and Colby are not as talked about in my network as much. Bates is and a lot. it’s the opposite of how it used to be as I can recall. Bates enthusiasm really changed in my neck of the woods. They must be doing a great job.
I will stay away from the name brands but in Chicago suburbs where I work no question Alabama for obvious reasons. I have been going to Detroit a lot lately and Wayne State and Grand Valley are mentioned a lot. Even kids with stats to go elsewhere seem to be gravitating to Grand Valley.
@Knowsstuff the Chicago area kids I know at Alabama all hang out with Chicago area kids there. Seems a little crazy to go all that way and not spread their wings on the friendship front!
Bates for sure. Even people in my CA high school are talking about it. It’s really become a nationwide name.
Any school ranked in the top 30 by csrankings.org is now a mandatory application in the Bay Area. Rutgers, Purdue, Penn State, UT, A&M etc. come to mind. Public flagships seem to have taken over most of the good CS programs, although #1 is still CMU. Speaking of CMU, I can count the number of seniors not applying there on my fingers.
Lots of low-stat kids who consider NYU a target and high-stat kids who think it’s a safety. Neither are true.
Colorado College. Considering how many people just go by U.S. News rankings, you’d think it would have fewer applicants. The opposite has happened and now it’s ridiculously hard to get into.
Northeastern as well. I don’t like its marketing tactics, but gosh darn have they paid off.
Curious as to the criteria for being a Hot school. For example, I saw a post here claiming Pitt was hot a few years back, while UMD and Delaware seem to have taken their place. When I compare admission stats of those schools, including from College Confidential forums, Pitt by far seems more difficult to get into, or to reach the top tier for merit aid. I know for a fact that Pitt’s standards this year are far higher than they were just 3 years ago, when my oldest applied.
To me, if admission is getting more difficult, that means more demand and a hotter school.
I don’t know the criteria for “hot” either, but anecdotally from here in North Carolina, for OOS students, Elon and High Point U are the ones I hear about. These are not very popular with in-state students, though. They seem to draw mainly from the Northeast. For my money, as a NC parent, I would not send my kid to one of those because there are much less expensive and better in-state public UNC-system schools. They are kind of head-scratcher for me, but OOS folks seem to like them.
Of the in-state publics, I would say Appalachian State and UNC-Charlotte are getting the most momentum. UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State have always been very popular and selective in-state options.
I think East Carolina is getting some OOS interest too, and they have expanded a good bit in the past decades and offer a wide range of highly regarded health-care oriented studies. ECU does tend to serve students from the eastern part of the state who want to stay closer to home, but kids from all over go there.
Here in the middle of the state, though, I hear more about UNC-Charlotte and App (and UNC and NC State, but those are pretty hard to get into). My kids go/went to a NC charter school and about half the class of 2019 went to App State. UNC-Charlotte has been growing like crazy lately and transforming itself from a small commuter school to a major state school. I think the enrollment has grown by 33% over the past 10 yrs. UNC-Charlotte has passed UNC-Chapel Hill (the flagship) for undergrad enrollment at somewhere around 22,000 (overall enrollment almost 30,000). UNC-Chapel Hill has a larger overall enrollment because of graduate programs, though.
UNC-Wilmington is also fairly popular, but it’s more of a mid-size campus (15000) enrollment.
Western Carolina (WCU) is also gaining some momentum due to the crazy cheap tuition deal the state is offering there now ($500 in-state, $2500 OOS). The state also has the same deal for Elizabeth City State and UNC-Pembroke, but I don’t hear as much about them. WCU is in a much more scenic location.
Davidson and Duke are always popular and super selective and super expensive.
NYU is a perennial favorite at my kid’s school – for kids who want a city school, this is it!
A lot of the other interest is pretty well distributed in terms of size, geography, etc. LACs tend to interest a smaller part of the student body but were more popular this year.
Purdue’s recent announcement of a 9th straight year of holding tuition/costs at 2012 levels, through 2021-2022, should continue the increase in interest.
I think the earlier mention of an increasing focus on costs is accurate.
Given the stats of recent engineering classes, I’m not sure my D, now a Junior, could get in these days (same with my wife and I at CMU).
I think The increase in interest is mostly in engineering, CS, and, to some extent, business.
To those asking. There’s no criteria and this had nothing to do with appropriateness for any student.
This is from my original post,
“Outside of the consistently top schools. What traditionally strong institutions outside of this top group that you feel both here on CC and in your worldview seem to be more competitive and attractive than ever. And why?“
It was simply to see what schools that don’t always make it on the innumerable threads on the same schools. In your town and child’s school. Just to add some breadth to the dialogue is all.
Denison seems to have become a lot more popular. In 2013, 4850 applied, in 2016 6,100 applied, in 2018 8,000 applied, and last year over 8,800 applied.
I’m not sure if I’ve wandered into my own little ‘echo chamber’, but University of Alabama had never been on my radar until a year or so ago. It was only when we realized how strong the merit aid was that I started seeing it mentioned on a lot of threads.